Sipadan Island

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We visited Sipadan Island in March 2003. It's off Sabah, Borneo and the jetty is situated in Semporna, about 2 hr ride from Tawau Airport... a bit far as you have to take a small fokker plane from Kota Kinabalu to Tawau, then travel 2 hours by van to a charming fishing village called Sampoerna.. then travel some 45 minutes by speedboat to the island. But the travelling was worth it, as it was the best dive trip we've had in years... in fact, everytime we dive, it's our benchmark.

Sipadan has the most accessible and amazing drops, 10m from the beach, you can drop 1,200m straight to the bottom of the ocean.. when we went, the current were so strong and the salinity was high... the salt stung so bad that my wife had to abort her dive, as she couldn't open her eyes.

Sipadan is tough to swim... but if you can get past the currents (you actually have to hang on to the rope) you can see a lot of turtles and sharks... it's supposed to be famous for the swirling school of baracuda, but unfortunately, we didn't see it.. too early in the season, it seems.

My wife prefers Kapalai Island, which is about 20 minutes from Sipadan.. amazingly, the resort is built entirely on a sandbar... the entire resort is on water.. the diving was fantastic.. the colors of the corals and small life jumped at you .. it was a sensory overload! We even saw the famous "Mandarin Fish" - a small lil thing the size of the tip of your pinkie... it seems that underwater photographers stay up to 40 minutes at the exact same spot to capture the perfect shot of the elusive and shy Mandarin Fish... drifting was just heaven.. like watching high resolution TV.. it was almost too good to believe... on the last day, because we were taking a flight, we just went snorkelling under the jetty.. and if you can believe us.. it was amazing... there were dozens of neon bright pipefish just hanging around... huge spotted groupers... scorpionfish... angelfish.. too many for me to know... and you could see all that by just putting your head under water whilst sitting on the jetty!!

The highlight of the Kapalai trip was whilst we were having breakfast and talking to a fellow japanese diver... 3 lionfish actually surfaced to the water and stayed there some 15 minutes! If we didn't see that with our eyes, we wouldn't have believed it.

Right now they don't allow you to stay overnight at Sipadan.. which is good for the marine life.. the Kapalai resort is good, with great facilities (including bathtub!). We're targeting its nearby Mabul Island next.. hopefully we can stay on the offshore diving hub... it looks like an oil rig and is small in the middle of the water... looks strange but the dive guides tell us the fish there are diverse and colorful.

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Sipadan Island

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Photos

Sipadan Boat
Our dive boat... the crystal clear waters were always perfect!

View from the room
The resort has been discontinued due to announcement of World Heritage